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If ever I wanted a wine to transport me, as a good wine can do, it was this past New Year’s Eve.  By the time 2021 was mercifully drawing to a close – amidst sky-rocketing COVID rates, fires burning more than 500 homes in Boulder, Colorado, record snowfall in California, record heat in parts of France, unprecedented threats to...

After a long year and a half, our good friends and neighbors Ursula and Bob returned to the neighborhood from their other home is in upstate New York, in the Catskill Mountains. It’s really nice to have them back.

To celebrate their return, we had them over to dinner and wanted to share a...

Actually, a grape by many other names!

Vermentino is a light-colored grape that has been determined to have its literal roots in Liguria, on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the northwest of Italy. Wines produced from Vermentino are most often found in this same region of Italy (also in...

Provence is abuzz this time of year with fabulous offerings of art, music, opera, film, wine tastings, and the usual fêtes that move from village to village. We traveled from New England to Provence last month specifically for this show by French painter Gérard Isirdi at Château Barbebelle in Rognes...

Full disclosure: The South of France is a small world and when one writes about rosé, this world is really small.  Elizabeth Gabay MW is a friend but, that aside, this guide is an exceptionally impressive endeavor that belongs in the online libraries of anyone who drinks rosé from...

This week’s pairing is pretty unusual… but trust me, in the end, it makes perfect sense. The anchovy sauce used in my recipe for Roasted Chicken with Colatura di Alici is Italian; it is a descendant of the ancient Roman garum. Coincidentally, garum was produced by the Gauls and exported from the southernmost tip of France...

As you know from Susan’s recent articles (“A Perfect Storm” and “Fear and Angst”), the Southern Rhône Valley has had a really tough time of it lately. Long, drawn out freezes have severely affected the vines, which will affect CDR wines for years to come. Today, to show support of vintners from that region, I am pairing my meal with a...

Vineyards across France were exposed to plummeting temperatures and severe frosts last week, causing massive damage to the vines as well as other crops.  The storied regions of Burgundy and Bordeaux may have captured more of the attention from mainstream journalists, but virtually every part of France was affected by temperatures that dipped as low as -8֯ Celsius (17.6֯ Fahrenheit) on as many as three nights...

Sharing Wine & Food at the Table Thursday, April 1st 7:00 p.m. (ET)

Zhuzh up your cheese and charcuterie board to pair with Château Barbebelle Cuvée Madeleine Rouge and benefit The Alex Manfull Memorial Fund Supporting Research, Education, and Treatment of PANDAS.

Please join Susan and William “Towny” Manfull, founders of The Alex Manfull Memorial Fund, and David Scott Allen, editor of Cocoa & Lavender, at the Urban Wine Club for a fun and informative webinar about an excellent ...

As I have mentioned here before, I like to put wines to the test, finding their limits when pairing with food. Does it go with this? Or that? What could I change in the recipe to make it work? Often it takes two or more bottles of a wine to find its perfect match. The challenge I faced this week was that I had one bottle of the L’Exclus d’Alary...